If you like sativas, then this is definitely one for you holy shit. Now I’m not a tightly-bound intensity kind of guy regarding my weed, usually defaulting to dark fruit indicas, sweet ones, and shit.
But I do enjoy a solid 50/50 or sativa-leaning strain once and a while, even though they’re more likely to make my nose tingle like I got a couple of granules of ground white pepper up there or something.
For the most part, my experiences with sativas are just fine, although I confess that I still do get a little bit, uh, jittery when smoking something like Supa Durban or equally citrusy gasoline-y strains. Colorado Sunshine, Lemon Royale, Amnesia Haze, etc., are all fond memories.
As such, on my first ever (and delightful!) visit to Hillsboro’s The Vth Dispensary, I returned to my old double barrel shot strategy where I get one heavy sativa-leaning strain and one heavy indica-leaning (literally sometimes) to alternate between.
As such, I like being equipped with one for the daytime or exploring or being productive and one for the Friday movie nights and rainy Sunday afternoon naps. A slug and some birdshot, an escalator, and a de-escalator, if you will.
So, I walked out with a half-ounce total split into two-quarter ounces. One quarter-ounce was some extra dulce White Truffle from Focus North, and the other one was what this review is about, which is (drumroll….) Sparkling Lime!
What a tantalizing name, right?!
This Sparkling Lime was grown by Otis Gardens (my second sampling of their product) and was harvested almost exactly 2 months before my smoking it. I absolutely looooove my fresh bud; danker is DANKER, okay, curers!
Got to give props to the Otis folks for an excellent grow and, importantly, a reasonable cure. I prefer my buds on the (sorry have to say it) m-o-i-s-t side. They smell better. A higher % of their trichomes stay intact. They smoke cooler and have more flavor (either vaped or smoked), and nothing you can say will change my mind.
Harvest was a couple of months old, but you’d think it hit the shelf before you walked into the dispensary to pick it up. In deli-style states where jars are very frequently getting opened to let people smell test, it’s important for farmers to err on the side of slightly higher moisture content than too little because of the massive angel’s share retail necessitates.
This quarter ounce from Ortis Gardens tested in at 31.35% THC as well, which I honestly did not notice until the budtender printed the label and handed me back my jars of bud that I saw the %.
Please consider investing in some Re:Stash stash jars as well if you don’t already because they’re so much better for the environment, are more tactile and easy to use on a daily basis, get you a 5% discount at The Vth, and actually create an airtight seal for your flower vs. single-use plastic canisters. Canisters fucking suck. Say it with me!
CBD tested at 0.07% if you care about that but probably not; this shit slaps and isn’t what I’d call a calming balancing CBD-type of experience.
On the whole, I was excited to try Otis again. I smoked Otis long before I started saving my jar labels, and I had a fond, albeit faint, memory of a positive experience.
Otis Gardens strive to grow the best cannabis in Oregon, which is something they boldly state on their website, and I respect that. Heck, if you’re favorite farm isn’t equally passionate about its craft, you might want to reconsider your options.
This Sparkling Lime was bred by Sin City Seeds out of Las Vegas baby, which looks to have a delicious as fuck catalog.
Appearance: Fresh & Furry
This is a cute-looking lady; that much is obvious. The structure of the nugs is in the medium range, perhaps just slightly smaller, maybe on a scale of 1-10 wherein 1 is tiny popcorns, and 10 are thicc chonky mofos, and 5 is an exact medium then this harvest of Sparkling Lime I got would be like a 4 I think.
The edges are rough; it looks like it was cured on a sealed flat surface like a giant baking sheet or something because they haven’t been compressed. The edges are rough and kind of jagged, and the above-average-in-length stigmas (light in color) are wholly intact and, for the most part, standing up kind of like the blondish hairs on my arm.
To distill this, I’d say this is a very Oregon-looking weed. It looks like it was just harvested and skipped the curing process (it’s definitely cured well, JUST talking appearance-wise). Some organic natural minx from the countryside.
This is the kind of weed the camp counselors smoke together on the lake beach after the staff-only end-of-season party that the camp owners very honorably turn a blind eye to young nature geeks to embrace it all. Green socks and Teva sandals and cold river creeks. Lifeguard duty. Bright good times is what this bud looks like.
Smell: Fresh, Herbal, Slightly Chemically
What can I say? It’s a straightforward smell. It’s lime, and it’s permanent marker, the off-brand super thick ones your parents always had layering around when you had garage sales. There’s not a ton of that skunky twang you might expect from something with a Lime Skunk parent and a White Nightmare parent.
Yeah, White fucking Nightmare, which idk, honestly, if I’d read about that lineage prior, it might have deterred me. Yeah, I had a memorably intense experience with Green Crack very early on my personal cannabis journey, and I still take a gulp of nothing whenever I see it on a menu.
Bright citrus is definitely in the air, but it’s buttressed by that chemical-esque permanent marker and topped off with a lingering green apple. The obvious citrus rind finish is as wake-and-bake-friendly of a strain as any.
Whether it’s blazing up before exploring a new city, attending a friend’s Elvis impersonator wedding in Vegas, or shit, just trying to uplift your mood sitting under a tarp in soft forest rain.
If I were a billionaire, I’d ask my personal chauffeur to load my jet and Lexus luxury van (yeah, you need to know about these) with Sparkling Lime because it would be such a great fresher-upper of a smoke.
That Greek poolside lime spritz freshness on the nose actually has intentions of its own, and there’s nothing you can do about it after you flick that lighter and open your lungs, baby…
Sensation: Wake & Bake Levels of Productivity
So there is a slight lag effect, or at least that’s how I experienced when smoking Sparkling Lime.
The flower took to a cherry without any issue, and my Elements papers did a good job guiding an even burn.
The inhale was sharper than I expected and had a couple of milliseconds of “Oh shit, what did I buy” as I waited for the cough one gets with dry, hot, burning, scratchy bud, but oddly, it never came.
While Sparkling Lime goes down tingly and fresh, like a menthol on a crystal-clear, frigid February evening in the snowy midwest. There’s no coughing because that fresh tingly wave dissipates quite quickly.
The act of smoking this stuff is like when you drink ice-cold unsweetened sparkling water on a hot summer day. Think the non-flavored La Croix, or Klarbrunn if you actually know what you’re doing, or Perriere if you’re rich. Imagine drinking one of those that was kept really cold, like colder than your average consumer refrigerator cold.
It bubbles and tingles and almost burns but in a dry-ice kind of way on the way down, and that is a little scary, but then poof, like early morning fog on a sunny day, it dissipates.
I smoked about half of my joint, which was probably a 1.5-ish gram joint, extinguished it, and exited my bathroom before the high really started to ramp up. I have no idea how long it took me to smoke that .5-.75 grams worth, maybe 5-6 minutes? 10 minutes tops?
Not until the end of the session did I start to feel the thrust of Sparkling Lime’s jet engines which then quickly accelerated into takeoff speed just like riding a plane going from lollygaggin down to the takeoff part of the runway before being hurdled up into the sky.
I’d say it’s a productive weed. My fingers move and work just fine, which I’ve had issues with in the past, but I have my theories on that. This blog post was written immediately after my smoke session, and I’ll edit it minimally so that you can judge how this affects my thought process, logic, and continuity.
Conclusion: Solid A.M Smoke
I want to shout out to the staff, whoever you were at idk, 4 pm on 3/26/2023, for creating a welcoming atmosphere, for taking the time to let me nose-sample at least a dozen jars, and for adding your personal recommendations and experiences. 10/10 budtender experience. In retrospect, I should have tipped more.
Anyways, if you’re in Forest Grove or Hillsboro, I’d recommend The Vth because they have Deep Creek Gardens, LOWD, Focus North, Otis Gardens, Highland Provisions, and Deschutes Growery..they’re all legit.
Shit, if you live in Beaverton, now you’re spoiled for choices between East and West. Smoking strains that have been wrapped up in a bowtie of a personal recommendation always smoke better, like getting a push-off when you’re trying to back your canoe off a river’s sandy bank.
If you’re into complex sativas and see Sparkling Lime on the shelves, give it a look and a sniff, it definitely delivers on providing a very direct, very bright kind of high, but in a kaleidoscope kind of way. Having some lounge playing in the background helps as well.
To conclude, I’ll paste in a quote from Otis Garden’s own description of their Sparkling Lime, which I think hits the nail on the head and is something I wish more farmers would do!
[Sparkling Lime is] Flower that truly embodies its name; the lime soda smell will have your mind expecting a tickle from the fizz. A reliable, day-time, adventure bud. -Otis Gardens
Honestly didn’t read that description until I’d already written this entire review and was investigating the genetics (SinCity Seeds) that I noticed Otis’ genetics page with unique (and highly accurate so far) descriptions of their plants.
Excellent work, Otis Gardens; all around, great stuff. Bra
